Ismail Haniyeh

Ismail Haniyeh (29 January 1963-) was the Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority from 2006 to 2014, succeeding Ahmed Qurei and preceding Rami Hamdallah. He was a major leader of Hamas alongside Khaled Mashal, and he exercised prime ministerial authority in the Gaza Strip even after the real Palestinian government dismissed him from office in 2007.

Biography
Ismail Haniyeh was born on 29 January 1963 in the al-Shati refugee camp of the Gaza Strip to two Sunni Muslim refugees originally from Ashkelon, and in 1987 he graduated from the Islamic University of Gaza with a degree in Arabic literature. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and joined the First Intifada in 1988, being imprisoned by Israel a year later. In 1992, after three years in prison, he was deported to Lebanon alongside Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, Mahmoud Zahhar, and 400 other activists. Later, he returned home and became a dean of the Islamic university, and he became close to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin during the 1990s. In 2003 he was wounded in an Israeli Air Force bombing, but he survived and was made Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority in 2006, succeeding Ahmed Qurei. In 2007 he was dismissed from office by Mahmoud Abbas, leading to a split between Haniyeh's Hamas and Abbas' Fatah that also resulted in a war over the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh continued to exercise prime ministerial authority from 2007 to 2014 in Gaza, and in 2011 he condemned the United States' killing of Osama bin Laden, whom he saw as an Arab holy warrior.